Friday, March 06, 2009

Tony Benedict Predicts The Future (And is Funny)

Here's a dashing photo of Tony Benedict. From this picture it appears that he worked at Disney's early on and had a crush on Annette. I know him from his storyboards at Hanna Barbera. He was one of the last privileged artist/writers at HB. He both wrote and drew his own stories even into the 1980s if I remember correctly.I first discovered his work while I was in Taipei in 1985. Many of the Jetsons storyboards I worked from were drawn by old-timers like Alex Lovy and Lew Marshall. Their storyboards were thoroughly professional. They were staged logically, the characters were "on-storyboard-model" - simple yet perfectly clear and therefore easy to work from.Then one day, the latest storyboard came through the fax machine and it was completely different. It was not merely "correct" and logical, it was super cartoony, alive and funny as Hell. The storyboard itself was a work of art. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of it to show you.Anyway it was one of those storyboards that just inspired you to put more effort into your cartoon because it looked like the artist was really having fun drawing (and I think-writing) it.Once I discovered Tony's work, I called Bob Hathcock (my producer) and begged him to send me all of Tony's storyboards to work on. I knew if they sent his work to one of the other overseas factories, it would be totally wasted and you'd never see what he did make it to the screen.Maybe someone out there has a copy of Tony's SB work on the Jetsons. Maybe Tony, if you read blogs? I would love to post some of his unique stylish and funny work.Tony did the board for "High-Tech-Wreck" which was my favorite episode of the Jetsons to work on. These are some of the layouts we did. I think "Ronald" did the ones below.

If anyone has any copies of Tony's work, I'd love it if you posted it and sent a link.

AMAZING! These sketches are some of the best you have posted John. I have never heard of Tony Benedict until now, thank you for sharing these. What I like about Tony's drawings is the life that they possess. The characters on the page seem real......sublime.

Great to see those photos from ye olden days at Disney, UPA , and Hanna-Barbera.

Here's my Tony Benedict story:

In 1986 I was working at Filmation in the "feature unit" (the unit that did the insane "Pinocchio" and "Snow White" sequels "Pinocchio & The Emperor of the Night" and "Happily Ever After" . ) One day Will Finn tells me about this guy Tony Benedict who is putting together a proposal for an animated Christmas special and needs some animators to work on the "trailer" for the special . So I end up going to see Tony Benedict who is making this Christmas special and Tony gives me a scene on the trailer to animate . (this is all freelance work while I'm still working full time at Filmation) I remember very little about the job except that it was a Christmas special, and it involved a little imp character named Grimley who was working for the Devil (yeah, the Devil) ... "Grimley" was one of those characters that was all body , with legs and arms, like "Timer" from the "Time for Timer" spots that Depatie-Freleng and Rick Reinert used to do .

Ok, so I think the premise was that the Devil wanted to "ruin Christmas this year" or something like that, and ol' Grimley was supposed to be in charge of helping Satan ruin Christmas , but he messes up somehow and is on the lam from Hell , hoping that Old Scratch won't catch up to him.

That's all I remember about it . My scene was of Grimley running into a room with an old-fashioned wood burning stove . He zips in , looks around worried that someone is chasing him .... then Satan himself appears from the flames of the wood-burning stove and grabs Grimley by the legs and says something (I can't remember the dialogue) , which I think was "It's time to go Grimley" or "Let's go Grimley" . (dumb me , I didn't write the dialogue on my drawings like I should have .)

When I saw your post about Tony Benedict it made me remember I had these drawings and so today I scanned them and put them together into a pencil test. I have the drawings from my first rough pass on the scene , but I don't have the X-sheet. I did the best I could putting it together and I wrote out what I thought the Devil's dialogue was on the key drawings . (this may not be accurate) . Not all the inbetweens are done ... some of it is on 3's and 4's.

The only reason I have these first pass roughs is because the version I turned in to Tony Benedict was a tied-down on-model version with all the inbetweens and the effects animation drawn in blue on separate levels. But I saved this first rough pass.

I have NO IDEA whether Tony ever got this project fully funded and finished . (I don't think so, because I've never heard of it or seen it . ) . I'm not even sure how this scene fit into the rest of the trailer because this is all I did on it , just this one little scene , and I never saw the finished product. That was the last contact I had with him. IF I had known who he was at the time I would have spent more time trying to ask him about the old days at UPA and H & B. But I was just a dumb kid , happy to have some freelance work for the weekend. I forget who else worked on this little trailer. I remember Will Finn for sure because he's the one who told me about it in the first place . Maybe Lenord Robinson and ... ? someone else .